The Influence of Women-Sarah Stickney Ellis

When I read Sarah Ellis's thoughts on the position she felt women should have in society, I was initially appalled. How dare she side with men, in seeing women as inferior creatures whose only care in the world should be how better to serve!

"It is not to be presumed that women possess more power than men;.....who yet possess so clear a sense of the right and wrong of individual actions, as to be of essential in aiding the judgments of their husbands, brothers, or sons, in those intricate affairs in which it is sometimes difficult to dissever worldly wisdom from religious duty." (p 557)

As I began to read more, I looked beyond the surface of what she was saying and saw the power and unseen ability to change the world that she viewed women had. Sara Ellis believed in the "sixth sense" that many women claim to posses. The ability to know or sense that someone means us no good, that a situation doesn't feel right or that someone is lying to us. Ask any woman whose husband has been unfaithful, and she'll most likely say she sensed something was wrong. Sara Ellis was in tuned to a gift so treasured by her, that she wondered if it was heaven sent. Sure she had some opposition from the "burn your bra or corset women", but she stood firm in what she believed.

"....While his integrity was shaken, and his resolution gave way beneath the pressure of apparent necessity, or the insidious pretences of expediency, he has stood corrected before the clear eye of woman, as it looked directly to the naked truth, and detected the lurking evil of the specious act he was about to commit. Nay, so potent may have become this secret influence, that he may have borne it about with him like a kind of second conscience..." (557)

Wise women, young and old, are aware of the daily pressures men face. They can acknowledge this without feeling like they are minimizing their own challenges. Some women won't admit it but I will. We expect men to make more money than us, protect us, keep the house out of foreclosure, save for our future, and to continue going to the job that they hate, just because it brings home six figures. Even if we did want to hear it, men aren't going to tell you that in order to keep things afloat, he was tempted to take that bribe at work, cheat the little old lady out of her investments, or put a want ad in the paper for some male "Indecent Proposals" (remember the movie?). I agree with Sara Ellis that one of the reasons our men do not succumb to the temptations is that, they to, are aware of our "sixth sense". When they come home from work and reply that their day was fine, they are secretly hoping that they are looking convincing enough that you can not detect the evil that they wanted to do, but didn't. As they recline in their easy chair, they replay how they overcame the challenges of yet another day and pat themselves on the back thinking "what great morals and values I must have". All the while, she's in the kitchen patting herself on the back for keeping the "holy duty of cherishing and protecting the minor morals of life, from whence springs all that is elevated in purpose, and glorious in action." (558)